Inland Sea
by SydnieWren
Summary: In another life, Kabuto could have been revered, and Kakashi could have been reviled. Very dark. Torture, medical kink, dubcon.
1. 1

**Hi all, hope you're having happy holidays! This is an unusual fic for me, as I've never written with Kabuto before. But I think he's interesting, and I hope it's interesting to you as well. If you have a moment, please let me know what you think!**

**Disclaimer: Don't own.**

**Warnings: Nonconsensual sexual touching, slight medical kink, references to abuse, prolonged dream sequences.**

* * *

The whole city is submerged in water. Seaweed circles dangling lintels over empty doorframes. The wooden bins that once bore produce are now swollen and bloated with saltwater, their cargo long ago swept off by the waves.

Kakashi trudges with great effort through the debris, peering into darkened shops and abandoned dwellings. Now and again, rays of wavering light shimmer and vanish. When he tries to call out, the water swallows his voice, and the sting of seawater grates his throat.

A gutter is snapped loose of its eave and borne upward by a current. Upward and upward it is swept, over the roofs of the village houses, over the highest branches of leafless trees. No matter how long Kakashi peers into the infinite expanse of water, no surface is visible, only the shift of light and shadows, and scattered wreckage suspended ever higher.

* * *

Kabuto often wakes before dawn upon sheer force of habit, and when there is nothing to be done, he lays still and thinks. These mornings, of all mornings, are the worst of all.

Today is not one of them. No sunlight pours through his little sliver of window; the sky is slate grey, and the air is cool. He rises and verifies the time, staring for a moment too long at the face of the clock as he has for sometime been wont to do. He dresses methodically, supposing with resignation that he will need to bathe later, if a free moment arises.

The wooden floor of the corridor creaks underfoot, distended by the humidity. It rained throughout the night, thundering from time to time, and still it mists, hard rain coming and going in bands.

Kabuto rolls his shoulders as he strides through the long, winding hallways leading to the ad-hoc mission control room in the most inconspicuous, labyrinthine wing of the compound. It is here, in a room of clocks and calendars, that the shinobi deployed to defend the compound's premises at night deposit the records of typically unremarkable events. Kabuto retrieves the latest report from a stack of yellow folders made limp by the moisture in the air, and reads as he walks.

_A wire was tripped past midnight. The shinobi was sent from Konohagakure._

Kabuto is not surprised: this has been a rather regular occurrence since Sasuke took up residence in the compound. Irritating as the intervals of disruption are, they have been so far unsuccessful, and they do not concern Orochimaru.

He pauses to close an open window near the kitchen. Rain has pooled on the sill and has slickened a broad expanse of the wooden floor. With a dull, settling sensation of disgust, Kabuto realizes that the lower quarters, where prisoners and laboratory equipment are stowed, likely flooded during the night.

The kitchen is floored with tile and sparsely stocked. Kabuto leaves the report momentarily unfinished on the countertop as he goes about the mechanical process of preparing Orochimaru's first meal of the day.

Eggs, as always, with steaming rice and sparse seasoning, alongside a kettle of hot tea. Kabuto is no longer fascinated, as he once was, by the science of heat and the subtle and startling change in the whites of eggs as they become opaque, stiff, pale. Nor is he any longer taken by the sense of honor he once felt at being the one thought loyal enough to cook for Orochimaru: like the cooking itself, honor now feels rote, remote and mechanic.

Steam clouds the windowpane above the sink. Kabuto peers out through a shrinking expanse of clarity. A forest of spruce and balsam blends into ridges of shining blue-blackness as far as the eye can follow. The ground is strewn with a carpet of fallen cones and needles, and the grey horizon merges with the peaks of trees. After a few moments, the steam overtakes the last patch of clear glass, and Kabuto looks away.

The kettle is not yet whistling, so he takes up the report again, the small of his back pressed against the countertop.

_Four shinobi in total were counted. Two were killed. Two were captured. The dead have not been identified._

Kabuto glances up as the kettle begins to sound. Now is the time to start the eggs and warm the rice. A small, unmarked porcelain jar contains the flakes of seaweed and herbs preferred by Orochimaru; Kabuto lifts the lid and inhales their scent to confirm that nothing is amiss before sprinkling a spoonful over the rice.

These are the sort of provisions normally offered to the ill and wasting. Kabuto can recall simpler versions – weaker tea, cooler rice, watery eggs – from the orphanage infirmary, though only vaguely.

With the plate balanced in one hand and the report clasped in the other, he returns to the wooden-floored corridors, taking the familiar route to Orochimaru's quarters.

_One of our number was wounded. The captured have been identified as Hiro Nakano and Hatake Kakashi._

Kabuto paused and a shudder of sickly surprise pulses through him. He picks up his pace again lest the food grow cold and he be commanded to prepare it all over again, but now his steps are edged with a frenetic tension absent before.

_Hatake Kakashi._

He knocks on the doorframe and pauses for a moment before Orochimaru rasps his assent to enter. As always, the man has been awake for an indeterminate amount of time, rifling through papers and pondering the ineffable. Kabuto leaves the plate on a low end table like an offering and retreats slightly, the report clasped in his hands as though it were weighty as silver.

Orochimaru notices, of course. He peers over the rim of his teacup accusingly.

"Well?" he says.

"Good morning, Orochimaru-sama," Kabuto greets, and these days his insistent politeness is as much a sword as a shield, "I have last night's report for you."

"Go on."

"One of our shinobi was wounded in an encounter with four sent from Konohagakure. Two sent from Konohagakure were killed by our shinobi, and two were captured."

Orochimaru pauses, swallows, and appraises Kabuto sharply.

"Who?"

"A certain Hiro Nakano, and Hatake Kakashi."

Kabuto can see the same pulse of electricity that passed through him upon the revelation as it glitters in Orochimaru's yellow eyes.

"Is he healthy?" Orochimaru demands, his voice now quick and alert.

"I haven't checked yet," Kabuto answers, and then quickly adds: "I wanted to receive your orders first."

Orochimaru has risen from his bed and now paces in thought.

"See to him as a patient," he commands, "he must be at the peak of health to survive the transplant surgery."

_Naturally, _Kabuto thinks, _he wants the eye. _He knows he will be the one to perform the procedure, and the knowledge settles numbly in the back of his mind.

"Sasuke-kun cannot know of his presence," Orochimaru decides. "You must be discrete. In fact –"

He holds out his hand and Kabuto retrieves his belt on instinct, laying it across his palm.

"I will busy Sasuke-kun for the morning," Orochimaru declares. Kabuto watches and nods mutely. As a boy, Orochimaru _busied_ him for many mornings, and nights too, for that matter; some, he knows would feel compassion given the circumstances, but he doesn't feel anything at all.

* * *

A tinge of apprehension slows his steps as he approaches the underground cells where prisoners are held. Though Kakashi's chakra has doubtlessly been sealed seven times over and despite the fact that his body is likely mangled beyond recognition, Kabuto shudders as he draws near to the occupied cells.

Upon reaching the bottom step, he is reminded of his earlier suspicion: the basement has, in fact, flooded. From somewhere in the dungeon water trickles and droplets rhythmically add to the pool of accumulation a half-inch above the ground.

Kabuto stares blankly at the floodwater. Opalescent bands of color bend and sway on its surface, and he worries momentarily for the laboratory equipment, then carries on, his sandals soaked.

Orochimaru is both a scientist and a sadist, but he is twice the scientist he is the sadist, and thus the cells of his dungeon are more makeshift hospital rooms than torture chambers. They are small, square, well lit and suitably sterile, with spartan metal tables at their centers hovering over steel drains in the tiled floors. Kabuto peers briefly through the grate of the first cell and sees a shock of dark hair; immediately he knows that this is not Kakashi, and so he moves onto the second.

_Those stupid sons of bitches didn't strap him in?_

A cold thrill of rage wells and fades in him. Kakashi, whose blood has darkly dried in stripes and splashes across his pale skin, is lying still along the rear wall of the cell, rather than on the table. Kabuto slides open the shatterproof glass pane covering the metal grate.

"Good morning, Hatake-san," he calls out. His voice echoes for a split second, but there is no reply from the shinobi collapsed on the floor.

He had expected as much.

"I'm coming in now, Hatake-san," he informs the other, with all the antiseptic bedside manner of a veteran nurse. Keys clink and jingle at his waist, and then there is a heavy scraping sound as the door slides open. Kabuto steps inside and closes it behind him.

It does not appear to Kabuto that Kakashi has been conscious since his arrival. He has been stripped naked, though fibers and strips of torn cloth still cling to some of the deeper wounds along his torso. His breath comes in weak, stuttering gasps, as his mouth is positioned in one of the deeper accumulations of floodwater.

Kabuto decides not to wake him for the moment. There are sedatives in his hip pouch; he draws out a vial and fits it carefully with a needle, then plunges it into the taut stretch of muscle between neck and shoulder. Kakashi jerks reflexively but remains unconscious. After a moment, his breath grows smooth and steady, and Kabuto begins the work of hoisting him onto the table.

They are roughly the same height, though Kakashi is slightly heavier; Kabuto chalks it up to a pleasingly high proportion of lean muscle mass. Still the other man is difficult to maneuver, and sustains a few uncomfortable knocks to his limbs as he is spread out like a specimen on a slide over the table's cold metal surface. Kabuto methodically secures his wrists and ankles, elbows and knees, upper arms and mid-thighs. The last strap fits over his neck.

Most of his supplies are stocked in the cabinets outside the cell, and though it will only take a moment, Kabuto locks the door behind him when he steps out, and unlocks it to re-enter. He slips latex gloves on and settles a stack of antiseptic-soaked cleansing pads on the edge of the table, near Kakashi's thigh.

He drags the pads along every available inch of skin, stopping now and again to remove fibers and shreds of cloth with long, exacting tweezers. The deepest wounds are along his lower abdomen, near his navel; Kabuto is surprised there has been no evident intestinal perforation, though the lacerations themselves require a number of stitches.

As the blood, dirt and debris are cleared away, Kabuto begins to catalogue realizations about the legendary Hatake Kakashi that surprise him. Kakashi is slender: it's no trick of posture or effect of his unearthly grace; his waist and hips are unusually slim, however tightly muscled. His face, now sans mask, is youthful, his jaw narrow, his chin pointed. There is nothing remotely soft or feminine about him, not a hint of roundness or give, no sensual comforts. He is a man composed of planes and angles and pale shades of silver, and he is circumcised.

_How strange. _Kabuto sweeps the antiseptic pad over Kakashi's limp penis, curious as to whether the blood dried there is the result of local wounds or drainage from other sites. He can find nothing on the first pass, but doesn't discount the possibility of a particularly well-aimed senbon strike.

It will take time, he knows, for Kakashi to wake. Kabuto disposes of the soiled pads and strips off the greasy, bloodstained gloves.

"I'll be back in shortly, Hatake-san," he says aloud to no one.

* * *

The floodwater recedes, crystalizes, becomes an ice floe. Kakashi, now aware of wounds previously concealed by the flow of warm water, finds himself splayed out on the ice with nothing around him for miles but tundra.

He licks his lips and feels the hard edges of chapped cracks and scabs. Nearby, a presence materializes, and begins to dress his injuries.

"Why are you doing this?" he rasps, and Haku looks up wide-eyed, as though the question isn't sensible.

Haku's hands are fine-boned, frigid, and smooth, sliding against his skin without the barest hint of friction. He is fastidiously cleaning Kakashi's wounds, sewing up gashes and bandaging abrasions. Kakashi shivers.

_I'm dead, _he decides, _and this is the place you go if you were good and bad in equal parts._

"Zabuza didn't wind up with you, after all," he remarks. When he struggles to rise to his elbows, he is restrained by the heavy weight of his bones. Haku slips his searching fingers underneath Kakashi's sex, and smooths them along the length of it.

All around them are sheets of white ice, and above, the sky is grey and limitless. The frost blends with the sky in a cool shade of slate, and Kakashi can feel himself grow numb from the cold. A frigid shiver races up his spine as Haku runs a thumb over the tip of his cock, and withdraws his hand.

Never has he seen eyes so warmly dark, so impossibly wide. Haku smiles like a woman smiles, readily and deceitfully.

_This must be hell._

* * *

"It was the flood," Kabuto explains, extending a well-organized folio of documents to Orochimaru, with _all _submission, "I won't be able to conduct the transplant surgery until I have replaced this equipment."

Orochimaru scowls viciously and flings the folio back at Kabuto. No longer does the young shinobi flinch. He stoops to the floor and begins to gather the papers, bowing his head low.

"_How long_?" the other snarls, "How long until this is _corrected_?"

"Likely under two weeks, if we send some of our men to acquire replacements."

"Send them," Orochimaru snaps, "_immediately._"

"And the other shinobi, sir?" Kabuto stands deferentially, shoulders drawn, forehead inclined.

"Who?"

"From Konohagakure, a Hiro –"

"Kill him."

Kabuto bows his departure and drops the folio off in their ad-hoc mission control room with a short directive attached. Purchasing any kind of medical-nin equipment was traceable and interesting, and he wants no inquests; instead, he recommends that a team of three or more steal what was necessary from the nearest hospital catering to shinobi.

He descends again into the underground laboratory-cum-prison, where the water has yet to recede, as the rain has yet to cease.

Ill-fated Hiro Nakano has yet to awake, which fails to affect Kabuto in any particular way. He announces his entry through the grate, unlocks the door, and approaches the collapsed body. It's easiest to end it with a paralytic; moments after the plunger is forced down and the syringe is emptied into the shinobi's neck, his breath becomes weak and shallow, and then ceases altogether.

Kabuto leaves the door slightly ajar as a reminder to himself to clean the cell out a little later.

"I'm coming in now, Hatake-san," he calls through the metal bars.

There is a response now, though it is little more than a breathy groan. Kabuto locks the door behind himself and approaches the prone body of the famed Copy-Nin, now in repose.

"How are you feeling?" he asks, assessing the man's temperature and color as he draws near. A black eye opens very slightly, and then closes again.

"Need to take a leak," Kakashi declares flatly. The insubordination is temporarily infuriating, but Kabuto does not react. He smiles tightly.

"Go ahead," he offers generously, "there's a drain in the floor."

It is the opening gambit in a game that will last exactly as long as Kabuto wants it to, and Kakashi is aware of it. He expects a war of attrition, and internally he begins to catalogue the things he is willing to part with, from most to least readily.

His life is low on the list, after his eye, before Sasuke.

"You've lost a good amount of blood," Kabuto informs him evenly, with that strange cheerful edge, "and I wouldn't be surprised if some of these are infected. Do let me know if you experience any symptoms."

Kakashi swallows and stares ahead blankly, taking account of his own injuries.

"And try to get a little rest," Kabuto encourages, now on his way out, "I'll be back a little later."

The sound of the door closing is startlingly final. Kakashi counts it worthwhile, as he's now a great deal closer to Sasuke, which was the object of his mission in the first place. It's no longer a matter of distance, he decides.

It's only a matter of time.

* * *

**Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed! Please review, I love knowing your thoughts. :) **


	2. 2

**Hey all! Back with part 2. Thanks for all of your incredible reviews on part one: they're very encouraging! Please let me know your thoughts on this part. I hope you enjoy it!**

**Disclaimer: don't own.**

**Warnings: Very dark. Light medical kink. Implied sexual abuse. **

* * *

The light is deep blue and vague. From his prone position in bed the room seems impossibly long. The far wall is shrouded in darkness, and from the shadows, Iruka emerges.

Kakashi lifts his head to watch him undress. Iruka's skin is dark and darker in the summer time; right now, it is warm bronze above the collar and below the cuff. He steps out of his sandals because kicking them off would scuff the linoleum, and hangs his flack jacket on the back of a chair.

He says something lower than a whisper and Kakashi strains to hear it, but the sound fades and Iruka comes closer, now naked. He folds easily to sit, a young twenty, his joints yet untroubled by damage or age. It makes him flush when Kakashi says _it's been a while._

_You were away, _Iruka says. Kakashi smiles in the dark.

_Make it up to me_.

It could be the hour before sunset in the dead center of a long summer. Iruka takes his penis in his hand and begins to stroke himself to hardness.

Kakashi likes to watch: he always has. And for a moment he thinks of telling Iruka so, but then he decides that there would be no sense in it.

He is not really there.

* * *

The next morning is identical: rain, eggs, rice, status report. Water now stands in the concrete entry path outside the compound, and Kabuto has resigned himself to waiting a full two weeks for his equipment to be replaced.

Orochimaru is disinterested in news that does not concern Kakashi's condition, and he makes his boredom known with hissed commands to _get to the point. _Kabuto clears his throat and adjusts his glasses. These little delays are his smallest and most effective rebellions.

"Hatake-san is recovering," he reports, "he required twenty-two stitches and lost somewhere between two and three pints of blood. I'm monitoring –"

"Go now," Orochimaru scowls, "you're not _monitoring _anything from here."

Kabuto bows low and departs.

Still the floorboards are swollen with moisture, and still they groan under his footsteps. He walks lightly as if careful of the early hour, and not without reason: Orochimaru is as adamant about Sasuke's sleep as he is about the child's nutrition, and he sees to each category with the perverse zeal of a promised bridegroom. Even if he were less committed to the future of his body, Sasuke is as petulant and insufferable as Kabuto always suspected he would be, having known his clan in passing.

As he descends into the basement Kabuto notes a strange symmetry between the four of them, Orochimaru, Sasuke, Kakashi and himself, all of them once Konoha's finest sons, full of promise, now disgraced.

"Good morning, Hatake-san," he greets through the metal grate. Some of the water has receded, and the basement now smells of copper and mildew. Someone came in the night to take away the body of Kakashi's comrade, though Kabuto notes with a sidelong glance that they did not properly sanitize the cell. Nonetheless, the orderlies had printed the analyses he had run the night before, which was more than he had suspected they would do. As he passes the countertop he scoops up the stack of paper labeled HATAKE, and shuffles a low rolling stool along with his foot.

"I'm coming in now, Hatake-san," he calls, and the key twists in the lock shortly, echoing against the tile walls.

An elaborate network of clear tubes and metal rods clings like scaffolding to Kakashi's bedside. A clear tube leaks fluid into the jounin's vein from a plastic bag mounted in a metal frame, and a catheter extending from the tip of his penis empties the contents of his bladder into a collection vessel hanging beneath the table.

Kabuto settles down onto the low rolling stool to browse the lab reports.

"You're healthy as an ox, Hatake-san," he remarks lightly, "most jounin have some kind of sexually transmitted infection or another, on account of all the traveling. But you're clean."

_Clean, _Kabuto notes, _but anemic. _He surmises that Kakashi has a tendency toward iron deficiency that was provoked by the blood loss sustained during his failed mission.

"Do you have a history of iron deficiency?" he asks, rising, with no particular tone. Kakashi says nothing.

"It isn't terribly serious," Kabuto goes on, "but it could increase some risks of your surgery. What is your blood type, Hatake-san?"

Kabuto is by nature and training a battlefield medic, and he hasn't the mind for demonstrative compassion required of office-bound doctors. Kakashi again refuses to answer, and Kabuto, scowling, leans over the table.

There are ways of figuring out the things he needs to know, some twice as simple and expedient as mechanical analysis. Kabuto cursorily checks over the wounds he stitched the night before, and then settles back onto his stool, tugging a couple of scrolls from his flak jacket.

This captures Kakashi's attention. Kabuto is amused to see his eyes widen, the sharingan whirling uselessly, devoid of chakra.

Kabuto methodically unrolls the scrolls and then his fingers flicker through a sequence of seals. He nods toward the black ANBU tattoo high on Kakashi's shoulder. When he lays the scroll against it, he can feel the faintest trace of sweat dampening the paper. This, he notes, must be panic.

"You thought I wouldn't know this trick?" he asks idly, drawing the scroll away. On its surface are a series of neatly formed characters documenting a host of Kakashi's vital signs.

His blood type is O, and his temperature and pressure are low.

"Didn't know you were an ANBU medic," Kakashi remarks grimly.

"I wasn't," Kabuto replies. Orochimaru was, which Kabuto is reluctant to mention: his master's presence is so stifling it is almost tangible, even in the solitude of this tiled cell, and giving name to it would only make it real.

"What's it like to be a traitor?"

It's almost too mundane to phase through the barriers of his consciousness. Kabuto winds the scroll around his finger and inserts it back into his jacket pocket.

"My loyalties are with Orochimaru-sama," he states flatly. It's rote and reflexive and might not mean anything in particular, but it quiets the jounin for a moment long enough to conduct a cursory exam. Kabuto stands and leans over the table, parting Kakashi's eyelids with his thumb and forefinger. He draws close to peer through the lens of his glasses into the red disc of the sharingan.

It is not so splendid in his mind as it is in Orochimaru's: he mainly notes the bluish cast to the sclera, ever a clinician, and concludes that the anemia is more acute than he had originally suspected.

"Fucking chickenhawk," Kakashi mutters.

Kabuto smiles mirthlessly, a reflex of learned submission, and releases his eyelids. He ponders the madness in Kakashi's disdain: after all, Orochimaru is only borrowing one more sharingan than the Copy-nin himself did.

* * *

First his door snaps open, jamming against its wooden frame. Then light floods in, and cold water is splashed over his prone body as he scrambles to sit up.

Orochimaru stands in his doorway.

"Go _handle _him," he spits.

Kabuto gropes for his glasses. When he finally forces them over the bridge of his nose, droplets of water obscure his vision for a moment. He brings the corner of his sheet up to dry the lenses as he stands.

_Him _is always Sasuke.

It must be sometime after midnight; there is only dim torchlight in the corridor, the sort of garish touch that Orochimaru elects out of habit. Kabuto travels the short distance to Sasuke's room and pauses briefly outside the door to listen for the boy's presence.

He can hear the shifting of cloth and shallow, childish breathing.

"Sasuke," he whispers flatly, and taps on the wax-coated rice paper door.

The sound ceases.

"I'm coming in," Kabuto warns. He cautiously slides the door open, and peers into the darkness.

Almost immediately he is struck by the urge to recoil. Sasuke's room is small, commensurate with his age, and relatively unfurnished; nonetheless it smells like an animal's den, fetid and earthy. He enters despite himself and closes the door behind him.

"Get out," Sasuke demands.

"Shut up," Kabuto replies. "What happened?"

He tugs the chain of a low-mounted lamp and its dim bulb flickers to life. Sasuke is naked and half-concealed in a nest of wadded sheets. His hair is damp and matted to the nape of his neck and his temples.

"They need to be washed," Sasuke grunts, indicating the sheets.

Kabuto begins unwinding them from around him. When Sasuke bats at his hands, Kabuto jerks the covers hard in warning. Orochimaru does not approve of him striking the boy, but threats are not prohibited.

The acrid smell is urine. Kabuto wrinkles his nose in disgust.

"Is this yours?"

He spreads a small expanse of the wrinkled sheet between his thumbs. The faint cooling stain there smells strongly of ammonia. Sasuke refuses to look at it.

It is not his. Kabuto is almost certain of it. Orochimaru has a strange proclivity for inducing those dry, powerful orgasms of earliest adolescence, and Kabuto is sure he would have heard mutterings of frustration of Sasuke had matured ahead, as it were, of schedule.

He folds the sheets in on themselves and carries them by their dry corners to the bin designated for sullied equipment and clothing. Some lower shinobi would deal with it as part of their regular duties. Kabuto retrieves a clean set of linens from a high cupboard stationed in a narrow corridor, and returns to Sasuke's room.

"Here," he says flatly, lowering the stack of sheets to the boy still kneeling in his bed, "now pull yourself together."

There are less considerate remarks he could make, and he knows so.

But he presses his lips tightly together and briskly assists Sasuke in fitting the sheets onto his small bed. His own silence troubles him. It is because he is groggy, he decides, that he says nothing further. It is not because he recalls, on some level, the very sensations that now weight Sasuke's consciousness with the ponderous burden of shame, nor because he knows that this is the body he will one day lie beneath in the darkness, should Orochimaru's plans come to fruition.

It is only because he is tired.

* * *

Kakashi angles his shoulders to the greatest degree he can under the tightened straps fastening him to the surgical table. The broad, flat band just above his left elbow digs into his skin, and he feels the strange twinge of something submerged just under his flesh.

_That's it. _

He relaxes, exhales. This is good news.

_Should've known they'd go the medical route._

He has used the night to catalogue the ways in which chakra can be sealed. There are jutsus, of course, the sort that leave marks on the skin and permanently alter the body; and then there are medical interventions, the placement of particular materials in key nodes in the chakra circulatory system.

There are advantages to the latter method from Kakashi's perspective. He can, with luck, extract whatever materials they have used to block the nodes they've chosen; usually it is not necessary to obstruct more than five or six in strategic locations.

Kakashi's brows knit tightly together as he considers the possibility.

_They know as well as I do that these things aren't as efficient as seals._

The idea that his body is being intentionally preserved for something arises in his mind, solidifies, sinks, becomes reality. He is sure of it.

_Could be worse._

It gives him time: if they are hesitant to permanently damage his body, it at least means they will be especially reluctant to kill him; on the other hand, he views the medical 'treatment' bestowed daily upon him with increasing suspicion and dread.

Footsteps echo in the corridor outside the cell. Kakashi tugs his arm against the strap and feels the strange twisting of the tiny metal plate embedded in his arm again.

"Good morning, Kakashi-san," Kabuto greets. Kakashi relaxes immediately, giving no indication of having tested his bonds.

"Kakashi-san?" he repeats, quirking a brow.

Kabuto pauses momentarily as he lowers a pale colored plastic bucket to the floor.

"Too familiar?" he asks, drawing near the table. "I apologize. I had a very…late night."

"Oh?" Kakashi's voice remains steady as Kabuto clamps the tube leading to the needle implanted in his arm and begins replacing the IV bag dangling above it.

"Nocturnal enuresis. Have you heard of it?"

Kakashi watches as the clamp is released, and within seconds, feels strange cool pressure seep into his vein.

"Think so," he replies. "Didn't take you for the type."

"I'm not," Kabuto retorts, rounding the table and leaning over Kakashi's groin. He slips on a pair of latex gloves, and produces, from the depths of his hip pouch, a few cloth pads soaked with alcohol. "Sasuke, however…"

A small syringe fits into a clear port under Kabuto's nimble fingers. His knuckles rest against Kakashi's inner thigh, where his skin is sensitive and milky smooth, untouched by scar nor blemish. Kabuto withdraws the plunger, and the syringe fills with water. Kakashi shudders as a persistent internal pressure is relieved.

"I don't recall that about him," he mutters.

"No?" Kabuto answers airily, "I was wondering whether it's a new behavior or an old one. Children sometimes regress under extreme –" he pauses to wrap an alcohol-soaked pad around the tube buried inside Kakashi's penis, and the stinging cold causes the other man to jerk – "duress."

"What _duress_?"

The question seems to catch Kabuto off his guard. He disposes of the catheter, leaving Kakashi feeling sore and raw.

"Orochimaru-sama's expectations are very high. Loyalties must be absolute. And anyway, since the body is going to be his in only a little while, it's very little more than enjoying _himself_."

"Is that what he told you?"

Kabuto's gaze flickers immediately and involuntarily downward. His knuckles are white.

"You're severely anemic," he states. "Common as your blood type is, I cannot locate anyone who shares it at present. I'll be back in later to start your iron treatment."

He stands abruptly and gathers his supplies. The bucket he stationed under the table only a little earlier remains, and he decides to return in a few hours to bathe Kakashi as he had planned.

"Can I get a blanket?" Kakashi interrupts his contemplation with that same blithely temperate tone.

Kabuto turns to glance over his shoulder as he pushes open the door. He does not reply, but returns mutely with a thin paper sheet, which he lays over Kakashi's prone body.

It is more than he expected.


End file.
